Uncanny Valley

I wouldn't have a problem with pulling eyes out from behind or handling them, even polishing them, while they were out, but I suppose touching the front of the eye while it's in the head would trigger my natural eye!squick. I'm really flinchy about my own...

=^__^=
Anneko

 

I'm with Moonchild on this subject.
I've made several other dolls that are technically off topic, but I'll keep it short and say one's a goblin. He freaks my siblings and my mother out, but when I showed him to a four year old cousin, she of course seized him, hugged him, and wanted to play with him.
They see a freaky doll with claws and black eyes,
she sees a goblin dolly.

I showed my dad pictures of BJDs and he's into scifi-fantasy art and photography, so he thinks they're really cool. I have NO idea how I'm going to explain them to my mother..

A lot of what people see things based on their Background of Perception. My Dad sees the dolls as an artist would, my mother and siblings... will probably be busy wondering why I have to have dolls at my age at all.

 

That would be my feeling. I'm FAR more creeped out by humans wearing masks or facepaint, just say NO! to clowns thank you very much.

 

I have come across SOME dolls that went way down into the uncanny valley, but mostly they dont send me down there - i find them incredibly beautiful, especially in some photography

 

I've seen some very lifelike dolls in photographs that took me a minute to make sure they were actually dolls, but as for actually striking a reaction of corpselike people? nah.

I think it's the scale of the dolls, often exaggerated proportions and lack of movement that separate dolls. If I met a doll that was life-sized, anatomically correct with a robotic instillation for movement then I would probably fall into the Uncanny Valley.

 

haven't seen a real bjd in real life yet. but there are a lot of photos of dolls that sends me down the "uncanny valley." I enjoy that feeling of closure yet the feelings of not knowing whether that's the get-away creepy or seriously cool and needs to be probed.
unless it's the jointed, antique procelein ones. then I feel scared. And the need to get away.
sorry if that's offensive to anyone, this is just my personal feeling.

 

BJD don't take me into Uncanny Valley. For me it's CG movies with animated humans-- where the humans are not quite as good as they could be. For instance, the first Shrek kind of creeps me out, but the second one not so much. There are moments in the first where they got movement right, but more often, it was clunky and not quite there. Same with the humans in the first Toy Story, but not the later ones. I think BJD don't creep me out precisely because they are so lifelike.

 

I've never felt or notice the Uncanny Valley seing a BJD, their lifelike and some sculpts are very much close to a human, but the proportions are not real, you can see is a doll, and the joints well just help to notice it, i think this dolls have something special, a kind of "alive" feeling that prevented me from creep me out or get a negative reaction, like that to a corpse or some of the more realistc reborns or robots.

 

Dolls that have ridiculously huge eyes freak me out. It makes me think their eyelids have been ripped clean off.

 

blythe dolls sometimes freak me out. I think it's the eyes too.. Not that their eyelids seemed ripped off but rather I'll start getting the feeling that they are watching me...

 

This is why I never get offended when people make fun of my dolls. Some people are more prone to the Valley than others, and I'm going to respect that, since I'm not running on a long-driven instinct.

I definitely experienced the Uncanny Valley when I first saw my friends' dolls. Their stares especially creeped me out, because it was off somehow. But now I'm collecting them, so the feeling has certainly worn off.

 

I don't understand the concept, honestly. I mean I get what it is. But I don't think it's a real scientific phenomenon. I think it's social training and nothing else.

I've never had this feeling about anything. I play games with realistic looking characters, collect these dolls, and just admire the work that goes into them. It's a beautiful artistic rendering of human form. How can something pleasing to the senses be disturbing?

 

Well, there's always going to be exceptions--dolls don't bother me in the least and never have. However, for people that do honestly have issues with dolls, it's probably a pretty good way of explaining their reaction, and there's enough people that do get put off by dolls and other really-human-looking-but-not things that there should easily be enough for studies as it's just not an uncommon reaction.

In some cases, I'm sure social conditioning probably does come into play, and I've also run into some people that I think were doing the whole "it's cool to be afraid of dolls thing" more than actually being frightened. But I don't know that that would be the case all the time...or, I suppose one way to look at it is that the social conditioning had to start somewhere for a reason. And of course, what pleases the senses of one person, isn't guaranteed to do the same for other people and people get set off by really different things.

 

I don't really get the idea of being freaked out by a doll. To me that would be like being freaked out by a dustpan and brush. I didn't even realise fear of dolls was a popular thing until I started collecting and everyone who came round my flat decided to proclaim how terrified they were. ^^;

However... I did get a wee bit uncomfortable when I bumbled into a Ron Mueck exhibition once... the sculptures are so... more human than human, if you'll pardon the phrase XD There was this one of a tiny little guy in a boat, and standing in front of him I was literally holding my breath as I was expecting him to move any second...

I found them fascinating yet disconcerting, because they were outsized, or undersized in some way. The sculpture of, say, Duane Hanson doesn't have the same effect on me, because they're completely to-scale. I wonder if this is because I am used to seeing shop mannequins in stores that are human-sized... even though those are not hyper-realistic. But perhaps there's the general familiarity there with his work...

 

That's a great example. I find hyperrealism hits the uncanny valley MUCH more than dolls do. I don't think it's that the uncanny valley doesn't exist and that it's all social conditioning (although I might argue that fear of dolls has been socially conditioned in some ways), but that for me at least, and for many people, especially doll collectors, the uncanny valley moves over to the right an inch. Most dolls simply don't fall into it.

To be fair, though, for the same reason hyperrealism freaks me out, reborn dolls both creep me out and intrigue me. I'm sort of stunned into wary silence around them (I think I've learned a little more patience with/respect for the doll community by being in it - although as you can see from my earlier post here I hadn't examined my reactions much since starting to collect, haha), but I do want to like, inspect them. Which is my reaction to things like the Ron Mueck figures as well.

There are definitely other things that come "too close" to human. Mannequins are not at ALL too close; however some kinds of CGI game graphics weird me out just a little because of their likeness and lack-of-likeness. Sometimes I really enjoy that (Final Fantasy, etc) and sometimes it's...off.

 

Oh: I think the new Dollmore Lusion Dahlia (etc) 90-inch doll might strike this in some people, though. She's basically 1:1 size for a small child, which might be a bit odd.

I personally have mixed feelings. On the one hand, she'd be really cool to photograph - no scale worries! On the other, yeah, a little creepier than average, especially since we've now encompassed "evil doll" trope and "evil little girl" trope in one go.

 

One of my friends had brought this up the other day and said that while there is a general criteria as for what exists in the Uncanny Valley, the individuals perception has a lot to do with it.

For instance, there are some who are rather scared of dolls that are nowhere near as realistic as BJDs , and there are others who are only scared of realistic dolls but not others.

 

But this is exactly the problem of uncanny valley. The more real it becomes, the more likely it is going to freak people out. The prime in animation was 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'. Their goal was to prove that 3d animation could mimic reality (perhaps to show that in the future we wouldn't need human actors anymore). The animators spend years and years working on that movie, but the endresult was that it was a nice story, yet many people felt they were looking at zombies and they were a bit disconcerted.

The problem with mimicing reality is that every person on the planet is an expert on human behaviour and movement. Everything that looks off gets noticed (uncanny valley). When an animated character is stylized, we don't mind his unrealistic movements so much and to us they look normal, because we don't apply the same rules to such a character, but if it is a realistic character we suddenly ask ourselves: 'why aren't his eyes moving like they should?'.

In the case of 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within' it was a very simple error that caused the 'zombie-like' behaviour: When a character saw something in the corner of the eye, he first turned his head towards the subject and his eyes followed. In reality it is exactly the other way around.

Right now animators realize that it is near impossible to create the perfect realistic character, 'cause as soon as you get too realistic, there are so many details in our body's movement that cannot be calculated. The human eye, however, picks up every detail (or lack thereof) and if even one of those details is missing, it notices it and our brains processes it that something is wrong.

Okay, I'll stop stating the obvious now.

 

Wow... I watched that movie and yes, it did disturb me a little. Never could say what disturbed me. Now I know what it is...

IT'S THE EYES!

 

I am very familiar with this subject. At work we are always playing with 3D human models and the more realistic they become...the creepier they are! I have some small sensitivity to this myself. I want my dolls to look
sort of real but not TOO real. Shushu was a good mold for me to start with because her face proportions are pushed
and she has a slightly anime quality about her. She looks like a dolly so I accept her. Akali is the same. Her eyes
are too far apart and her face is more rounded out and smooth than any human face could ever be. I see her as a doll so again
I am not bothered by her.

I find that I am very freaked out by Reborn Dolls. It just goes too far for me. (I hope I am not insulting anyone! really.)

And this is coming from a girl who collects Living Dead Dolls! I love dolls so much!